About the Collection
Who; The Artists:
In choosing what art to include in this collection, I first thought back to artists I was personally aware who had explored the topic of space. At this point, Edward Hopper, Do Ho Suh, Ai Weiwei and Meriem Bannani were the frists artists to join the collection.
An important factor in choosing artists was my wish to maintain a list of 20 diverse persepctives, which was either regarding race, sexuality, and ethnicity or regarding themes and mediums. Artists like Kyle Coniglio and Deana Lawson, whose work I have been following in recent years, were the ones that immidiately stood out to me as necessary additions.
What; The Art:
The third method I used in discovering related art, was researching my topics. Specifically, I realized I lacked the personal knowledge about art that explores our existance on the digital space. Therefore, through "art about digital space" and "art about digital existance" Google searches, the art of Alessandro Apai, Addie Wagenknecht and Jill Magid were introduced to me.
At the same time, the kitchen-sink realism movement came to mind, which prompted more research into paintings that were produced in Britain as part of it. This led me to discover Jack Smith, who himself explained that: "I turned to my own environment for subject matter ... I wanted to make the ordinary miraculous," thus turning to his own private space to push into the spotlight.
When; The Ages:
Moreover, I decided that it was important to step away from modern and contemporary art and look back to how pre-20th century artists portrayed space. One of my personal favourite paintings, Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day. The 1877 peice that emerged out of the the Haussmanization Years, depicts the impact of public space on to our existance. As the boulevards in Paris became broader and brighter, walking in public became art; a perfromance; thus altering how we view ourselves in public forever.
Of course, I turned to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for more non-modern art. The Annunciation Triptych and John Haberle's A Bachelor's Drawer seemed exceptionally fitting for my collection, after browsing the Met's collection highlights.
Similarly, in looking for contemporary art that explores digital existance, I trusted the Whitney Museum of American Art's new exhibition Refigured. Through that, I discovered Rachel Rossin, Auriea Harvey and Petra Szeman.
Where; The Origin:
As a Greek Woman, a lot of the art I have seen has either been by Greek artists or has been displayed in Greece. Last summer's Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data exhibition in Athens was heavily on my mind when it came to choosing art for this project. Artsits Eva & Franco Mattes and Maria Papadimitriou were great choices for both the digital and public space sections. They not only explore these themes in their art, but in the specific installations the peices were displayed in public, and more specifically in a public park. This double connection to the collection meant they were easy choices.
Why; The Reasons:
As with every project, some of these peices have great thematic connections to the topic but not interesting reasons as to why they should be included. Both Faith Ringgold 's "Tar Beach 2" Quilt and Bruce Nauman's Floating Room (Light Outside, Dark Inside) are peices that in my opinion did not need more reasons to be here. Instead, they wholistically materialized my theme, and the sheer lack that came with running into them on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's and Guggenheim's website respectively, worked beautifully for this collection.